About - Art by Bella St John

Some people ask where I studied art? – The answer is simple – YouTube, books, and learning how to ‘see’! Seriously – almost every day I watch at least one tutorial, or study at least one technique from one of my beloved books. I have also begun teaching ChatGPT to know the style and quality to which I aspire and will upload my pieces to that platform and ask for suggestions – it is strangely helpful!

I simply don’t understand anyone who says they get ‘bored’ easily. There is so much information available – there always has been (before the internet (yes, I know – there really was a time before the internet) I was a fixture at my local libraries). You may not be into art – great! I am also learning the basics of reading hieroglyphs by watching tutorials provided by the British Museum – and it’s all free.

I strongly urge each and every person to find something – anything – that is of interest, and invest some time to explore the topic. Who knows – maybe you will find something about which to become passionate, as I did with my art.

For me, I love capturing the essence of whatever it is I am painting – it’s a little like telling a story, but with paints…

While my process differs depending upon the subject, the size, and the materials I choose to use, to give you an idea, this illustrates the progression of ‘Bobby Robin’.

I used to be a very firm perfectionist – if it wasn’t perfect in my eyes, it wasn’t good enough. While I still retain a little bit of that which I feel contributes to my desire to produce quality as best I can, the simple act of being able to enjoy the journey, as cliche as it may sound, has been – and continues to be – one of the most blissful I have ever experienced.

For instance, I shared this painting I did of my friend (below) when I was just starting out on my journey of painting portraits – that was a year ago – the image in the short video (above) is one year later – same source image photo.

If I did what I felt was ‘perfect’, I would not have progressed past the image below – that is far from ‘perfect’ – and would not have had such enjoyment as I experiment and play and learn…